Kolkata-based Experimenter all set to open second outpost in Ballygunge

The 100-year-old mansion will open with the group show I Wish to Let You Fall Out of My Hands

Within a matter of weeks, on February 28, Kolkata will have a new venue for cutting-edge art, as Experimenter is all set to open its second space in Ballygunge Place. Housed within two floors of a beautiful 100-year-old mansion—home to curator-writer Aveek Sen and his family for generations now)—is spread across 5,000 square feet.

More Than an Exhibition Space

Imbued with the same old-world charm as the existing gallery, which is located within the courtyard of a 1930s-house on Hindusthan Road, Gariahat, this new and much larger venue seeks to take the programming beyond just exhibition-making and look at a comprehensive learning-based dimension. “Like the Curator’s Hub, we will have a classroom or salon-style and chamber-styled situations. You could take an appointment with an artist, theorist, writer, historian or curator, who we will invite on a regular basis. The space will foster many such dialogues over the year,” says co-founder Priyanka Raja.

From Hindusthan Road to Ballygunge Place

As the opening date looms closer, one can see preparations being made for the inaugural show, I Wish to Let You Fall Out of My Hands (Chapter II). “This will be a continuation of the ongoing show at the existing gallery, which features Naeem Mohaiemen and Bani Abidi. It is threads like this that connect the two spaces together,” says Raja. In this group show, artists such as Moyra Davey, Rathin Barman, Prabhakar Pachpute, Julien Segard, Samson Young, and Adip Dutta have examined the idea of relinquishing the preciousness of thought, memory, desires, and relationships. It looks at releasing architecture, form, space and structures from their understood meaning. In some ways, the genesis of the exhibition stems from the Rajas’ (Prateek and Priyanka) desire to rethink the way they wanted to be, to be more than just a gallery.

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Ayesha Sultana, Form Studies V at Experimenter Kolkata

Ayesha Sultana, Form Studies IV at Experimenter Kolkata

Ayesha Sultana, Form Studies VI at Experimenter Kolkata

Melodies and Tombstones

The works, in the show, are a reflection of this way of thinking. A central work will be Memorial to Lost Words (2016), by Bani Abidi. This is a nuanced eight-channel sound installation culled from lost folk songs sung by women in Punjab, yearning for their sons, brothers and husbands, who were serving the British Army during WWI. Abidi’s installation, featuring haunting melodies along with tombstones inscribed with excerpts from letters by the Indian soldiers to their families, creates a soulful environment to reflect on loss and longing.

Moyra Davey, Still from Hemlock Forest, 2016 at Experimenter Kolkata

Architecture and Memories

Rathin Barman, on the other hand, approaches the built environment with the tools of an anthropologist, drawing information about the architecture through research with past and current residents. He looks at the memory of homes, which have been lived in for generations, but are in the process of being demolished. Barman’s monumental concrete and brass-inlayed wall mural builds a narrative recollection of architecture and its associated memories.

Age of Industrialisation

In another corner, one will get to see Prabhakar Pachpute’s suite of Untitled sculptures — strange amorphous series of forms, from which man and machine seem to emerge from each other. These are the artist’s satirical reflection, of sorts, on the age of industrialisation and the indifferent approach of today’s generation towards the land it lives on. “Different works will be placed in different rooms, thus allowing for a new navigation of the space,” says Raja.

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Bani Abidi, Memorial to Lost Words at Experimenter Kolkata

Bani Abidi, Memorial to Lost Words at Experimenter Kolkata

Experimenter’s new space opens with the show I Wish To Let You Fall Out of My Hands (Chapter II) on February 28, 2018. The exhibition will be on view until April 7, 2018.